In war zones, the explosion of bombs, bullets, and other ammunition releases multiple neurotoxicants into the environment. The Middle East is currently the site of heavy environmental disruption by massive bombardments.

A very large number of US military bases, which release highly toxic environmental contaminants, have also been erected since 2003. Current knowledge supports the hypothesis that war-created pollution is a major cause of rising birth defects and cancers in Iraq. We created elemental bio-imaging of trace elements in deciduous teeth of children with birth defects from Iraq.

Healthy and naturally shed teeth from Lebanon and Iran were also analyzed for trace elements. Lead (Pb) was highest in teeth from children with birth defects who donated their teeth from Basra, Iraq (mean 0.73–16.74208Pb/43Ca ppm, n = 3). Pb in healthy Lebanese and Iranian teeth were 0.038–0.382208Pb/43Ca ppm (n = 4) and 0.041–0.31 208Pb/43Ca ppm (n = 2), respectively.

​Our hypothesis that increased war activity coincides with increased metal levels in deciduous teeth is confirmed by this research. Lead levels were similar in Lebanese and Iranian deciduous teeth. Deciduous teeth from Iraqi children with birth defects had remarkably higher levels of Pb. Two Iraqi teeth had four times more Pb, and one tooth had as much as 50 times more Pb than samples from Lebanon and Iran.

As many as 100,000 Iranian-backed Shiite militia are now fighting on the ground in Iraq, according to U.S. military officials -- raising concerns that should the Islamic State be defeated, it may only be replaced by another anti-American force that fuels further sectarian violence in the region.

The ranks have swelled inside a network of Shiite militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces. Since the rise of Sunni-dominated ISIS fighters inside Iraq more than two years ago, the Shiite forces have grown to 100,000 fighters, Col. Chris Garver, a Baghdad-based U.S. military spokesman, confirmed in an email to Fox News. The fighters are mostly Iraqis.

Garver said not all the Shia militias in Iraq are backed by Iran, adding: “The [Iranian-backed] Shia militia are usually identified at around 80,000.”

A corrupt political class has led a 13-year pillage on public money in the pursuit of power. As oil prices fall, further jeopardising the country’s revenues, there is little hope that governance will improve.

One of Iraq’s anti-corruption leaders sat in his office, waving his hands in exasperation. “There is no solution,” he said. “Everybody is corrupt, from the top of society to the bottom. Everyone. Including me.”

Coming at the start of a conversation about Iraq’s ailing governance, and what was being done to turn things around, Mishan al-Jabouri’s admission was jarring. “At least I am honest about it,” he shrugged. “I was offered $5m by someone to stop investigating him. I took it, and continued prosecuting him anyway.”

Jabouri is a member of one of two anti-graft bodies, a parliamentary committee, tasked with protecting public monies in post-war Iraq. Both have more work than they can ever hope to deal with – even if they wanted to.

I was recently invited as a panellist for an event hosted by the Faiths Forum for London to discuss Iraq after Daesh, and potential scenarios for the future of the war-ravaged country’s political landscape and the challenges it faces. The panel included current and former post-2003 Iraqi officials, including former minister and current presidential advisor Abdul Latif Rashid and former government director of public relations Hamid Alkifaey. As one can imagine, opinions about the future of Iraq differed greatly.

The one facet that was repeated not only by most of my fellow panellists, but also from the majority of the audience, is the horror they felt following my comparison of the terrorists in Daesh with people I also describe as terrorists inside the Hashd Al-Sha’bi, or Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF).

The argument usually follows something along the lines of Daesh being an almost mindless entity with no political agenda but a singular focus on sectarian murder and mayhem and depravations that have been listed at length elsewhere. The PMF, on the other hand, are “volunteers” who put their lives on hold to heed the call of Ayatollah Sistani to fight the terrorists who swiftly conquered a succession of Iraqi towns and cities in 2014. Further, whilst individual acts of sectarian terror and abuses occur, they are not in the same ballpark or even on the same scale as atrocities committed by Daesh. That argument is nonsensical.​Firstly, Daesh has a political agenda, and it has made that abundantly and repeatedly clear. It wishes to assume control of a swathe of territory that is largely homogenously Sunni in character and governed by its warped version of Sharia, or Islamic law, in an equally warped vision of a caliphate. Brutal and despicable it may be, but it is hardly a mindless killing machine with no concept of what it would like its future state to look like, and this makes it all the more dangerous

Iraqi Shiite Muslim men from the Popular Mobilization Units hold a portrait of Iran's late leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini during a parade marking the annual al-Quds Day, or Jerusalem Day, on the last Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, in Baghdad, July 10, 2015. (photo by REUTERS/Thaier al-Sudani)

The Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) in Basra recently gave an old street a new name, Imam Khomeini Street. Naming a street after the leader of the Iranian Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, is not new in Iraq.

The local government in the holy city of Najaf had renamed a street after him in April 2015. The change in Basra, made July 1, sparked controversy and debate on social media because it was done outside legal and administrative procedures.

​The PMU's apparent usurpation of this power of local authorities and other actions have sparked debate on social media and elsewhere about what this might mean for the future in terms of the PMU's political ambitions and quest for power.

​Taleb Abdel Aziz, a journalist from Basra, and Sattar Awad, a professor of philosophy at the Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, expressed concern to Al-Monitor about the implications of the PMU's assertiveness on Iraqis' rights down the road. PMU spokesperson Karim al-Nuri told Al-Monitor that having political ambition is a legitimate goal for PMU militias given their defense of Iraq against the Islamic State (IS).

​Government offices have been shut and streets have emptied in Iraq as summer temperatures hit 53C (127F), nearing the highest recorded in the country.

The heat has been compounded by chronic power shortages, depriving homes of electricity for large parts of the day.

The conditions have placed a particular strain on Iraqis displaced by an assault on Falluja, a UN official said.Average temperatures in June were the highest recorded worldwide - a rise attributed to greenhouse gas emissions.

According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for June was 0.9C above the 20th Century average of 15.5C.

The man once regarded as the world's most powerful banker declared the Iraq war was 'largely' about oil.

​The man once regarded as the world's most powerful banker has bluntly declared that the Iraq war was 'largely' about oil. Appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1987 and retired last year after serving four presidents, Alan Greenspan has been the leading Republican economist for a generation and his utterings instantly moved world markets.

In his long-awaited memoir - out tomorrow in the US - Greenspan, 81, who served as chairman of the US Federal Reserve for almost two decades, writes: 'I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.'

In The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World, he is also crystal clear on his opinion of his last two bosses, harshly criticising George W Bush for 'abandoning fiscal constraint' and praising Bill Clinton's anti-deficit policies during the Nineties as 'an act of political courage'. He also speaks of Clinton's sharp and 'curious' mind, and 'old-fashioned' caution about the dangers of debt.